NASA Suspends Next Mission To Mars

Why the Brain Makes Mistakes

A study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University investigated the brain’s neural activity during learned behavior and found that the brain makes mistakes because it applies incorrect inner beliefs, or internal models, about how the world works. The research suggests that when the brain makes a mistake, it actually thinks that it is making the correct decision—its neural signals are consistent with its inner beliefs, but not with what is happening in the real world.

The research is in eLife. (full access paywall)

One of the physicists behind the Higgs boson has made an algorithm to replace the pill

It's up to 99.5% effective at stopping pregnancy.

One of the physicists who helped find the Higgs boson, Elina Berglund, has spent the past three years working on something completely different - a fertility app that tells women when they’re fertile or not.

It’s not the first fertility app out there, but Berglund’s app works so well that it’s been shown to help women avoid pregnancy with 99.5 percent reliability - an efficacy that puts it right up there with the pill and condoms.

Best of all, the app doesn’t have any side effects, and just requires women to input their temperature daily to map their fertility throughout the month.

Back in 2012, Berglund was working at CERN on the Large Hadron Collider experiment to find the famous Higgs boson. But after the discovery of the particle, she felt it was time to work on something completely different.

“I wanted to give my body a break from the pill,” she told Daniela Walker from Wired, “but I couldn’t find any good forms of natural birth control, so I wrote an algorithm for myself.”

The resulting app is called Natural Cycles, and so far, it’s had pretty promising results.

Continue Reading.

Scientists find “the holy grail of astronomy” after uncovering a galaxy that is made up of mostly dark matter

Mars will one day have a ring system due to Phobos, the planet’s small moon, being crushed by tidal forces

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket successfully launches to the edge of space and lands vertically back on Earth

A new exoplanet called GJ1132b is found 39 light-years away, making it the closest Earth-sized exoplanet ever discovered

Researchers make ultra-thin diamond nanothreads, which could help us build a space elevator

A blue Neptune-like exoplanet, which seems to have skies like Earth, is found orbiting a red dwarf star

A staggering 574 newly discovered massive galaxies are revealed that date back to the beginnings of the universe

New research shows that galaxies were far more efficient at making stars during the first 10% of history than they are now

The strange tale of the Snowflake Man

Wilson Bentley caused a flurry with his pioneering pictures of individual snowflakes, and his results are astonishing – so why was he seen as an oddball outsider?

What would Earth’s skies look like with Saturn’s rings? 

 Illustrator and author Ron Miller specializes in, among other things, incredible visualizations of other worlds. Now, Miller brings his visualizations back to Earth for a series exploring what our skies would look like with Saturn’s majestic rings. Miller strived to make the images scientifically accurate, adding nice touches like orange-pink shadows resulting from sunlight passing through the Earth’s atmosphere. He also shows the rings from a variety of latitudes and landscapes, from the U.S. Capitol building to Mayan ruins in Guatemala.

Images and text via

THE MOST POPULAR DRUGS  AND WHAT THEY’LL DO TO YOU

Here’s the lowdown on the most popular drugs and exactly how much you’ll probably regret taking them.

ALCOHOL

Effects:

If you drink enough of the stuff you’ll become drunk - a curious state of mind that brings with it impaired physical and mental abilities, higher confidence, increased urges to sing Kareaoke and terrible sexual judgement. If you drink even more it could cause black outs and projectile vomiting.

Repercussions:

An occasional tipple is fine but if you’re going to go all Oli Reed on the booze you’re looking at several scenarios. Best case being that you’ll wake up with a hangover that’ll range from a mild sense of irritating nausea to the type of brain pain that’ll have you searching the Yellow Pages for an exorcist. Worst case scenario is you get permanent brain damage, mental health problems and a full on alcohol dependency. Drink in moderation.

MARIJUANA

Effects:

A hazy chilled feeling that depending on your own mental steel will develop into symptoms ranging from slightly lax coordination and reflexes or stoner panic and anxiety followed by a bout of short-term depression or sleepiness. All combined with a bank balance massacred by takeaway food and Pickled Onion Monster Munch.

Repercussions:

If you’re in it for the long run you’ll end up so chilled out that your sex drive will be severely diminished, a permanent sense of drowsiness, supressed immune system and personality and mood changes. There have also been links to depression, paranoia and other mental illness.

MDMA/ECSTACY

Effects:

A bouncy gurning buzz and increased feelings of love for everybody and everything around you. All of which will leave you feeling on top of the world before you get distracted by the copious amounts of water you’re drinking and the sound of your own heart trying to remove itself from your ribcage, followed by light feelings of confusion and occasional psychosis. You’ll properly love colours and sounds and want to talk to everybody in the world about it.

Repercussions:

In complete honesty no one truly knows the exact long term effects of these drugs, owing in part to the amount of awful things it’s typically cut with. What we do know is that between 1996 and 2012 it was linked to just shy of 600 deaths and is known to cause heart, liver and kidney problems. The comedown will also feel like you’ve been punched in the face repeatedly for the previous 12 hours followed by your parents telling you they don’t love you.

COCAINE

Effects:

On a surface level you’ll feel like you’re slicker than a BP oil spill. You’ll be transformed into an ‘interested,’ chatty and confident social beast. Your jokes are great, you’re in no way talking too fast and no, you’re definitely not talking too loudly or too closely to people. Subconsciously you’ll have a growing sense of fear, internally asking questions like: “are people eyeballing me?” and “Why am I sweating so much?” Then your nose will start dripping and the only way back is to snort more. Thus begins the vicious circle.

Repercussions:

The next day you’ll feel like you’ve got the flu and no amount of mansize Kleenex is going to make it feel better. The more you take it, the more you’ll take which turns your heart into a hyperactive hamster in a running wheel, massively increasing your chances of a heart attack. Get through that though and you’re fine. Until your nose falls off and you become a paranoid recluse with a serious drug debt.

MAGIC MUSHROOMS

Effects:

Better known by science as Psilocybe Semilanceata, ‘shrooms are one trippy rollercoaster ride of a drug, falling very firmly in the hallucinogenic family. They’ll open your world into a folding kaleidoscope of colours and imagery. You’ll see the birth of the universe before your very own eyes, for a brief moment you’ll understand the meaning of life and your best friend will turn into a lovely giant teddybear. Unless you have a bad trip, in which case you’ll see horrible things you didn’t even think could be things, spilling out of your mind like it’s Pandora’s Box. You may defecate yourself.

Repercussions:

Long term users often find themselves getting flashbacks of the worse parts of their trips at the absolute worst moments. World perception becomes skewed and you cease to distinguish between reality and hallucinations. This can develop or antagonise previous mental health issues that may have gone unnoticed. There’s also the danger of accidentally ingesting one that’s poisonous, thus killing you…

DMT

Effects:

Another hallucinogen not completely dissimilar to LSD or magic mushrooms - in world culture there have been many cases of indigenous people’s traditions and religions using the substance in drinks and food to stimulate a spiritual effect, the idea being that you hallucinate some crazy cool stuff that brings you closer to your creator. Obviously bad trip rules still apply and it could definitely go horribly wrong.

Repercussions:

You can’t really tell how strong DMT is until you’ve taken it, which makes it tricky to assess your intake and then once your trip has started there’s no way to stop it. It’s like getting on a long-haul flight when you’ve got a fear of flying, you’re not getting off. Aside from the usual mental health effects, you’re also likely to vomit and feel nauseous, coupled with raised blood pressure and heart palpitations.

LSD

Effects:

The sort of junk your parents were taking en route to a Santana concert back in the good ol’ days of free love and rock and roll. It’s the granddaddy of hallucinogens. It’ll make you feel like you can control time and have the secrets of the universe stored up in your spaced out noggin. It could also flit in the blink of an eye, like the narrative of The Wizard of Oz. One second you’re floating around Candy Town and chatting to the friendly scarecrows, the next minute you’ve got flying monkeys chasing you into a forest full of angry psychopathic trees.

Repercussions:

Like all drugs of this type, if you’re knocking back a lot of this stuff it could have some seriously detrimental effects on your mental health, heightening the mood that you’re in at the precise moment of your trip. You could walk away with some serious depression, panic attacks and perpetual tiredness. Plus there’s the risk of the odd Acid Flashback, which might seem fun now but when your commute to work suddenly turns in Hiroshima you won’t be chuckling so loudly.

OPIOIDS

Effects:

Generally speaking these are synthetic opiates. Things like morphine, which is more or less the medical painkiller version of heroin. Initial benefits are things like pain relief, euphioria and lovely fuzzy feelings of well-being taking you to an uber-relaxed state. But with that comes intense sweating, itching and nausea and more worryingly, addiction. And the need for more, with which comes: fatal overdose.

Repercussions:

Serious addiction. Your life will slowly turn upside down, you’ll be stuck in a constant state of lethargy, you’ll be constipated, you’ll be itchy, dizzy and all in all you’ll probably not be a very fun person to be with. Plus there’s the constant risk of overdose and depending on how you’re taking it you could be at risk of other infections. Nasty business.

PILLS

Effects:

A thoroughly ambiguous type of club drug. Effects could be anything from thinking you’re a superhero to falling in love with your best mate and believing you’re the most popular kid in town who can stay up dancing forever. Or, it’ll send you into a weird state where you’re feeling violent, sleepy, sick or on death’s door. It could be lots of things because generally speaking, you won’t know what’s in it. Which is absolutely terrifying.

Repercussions:

It really depends what’s in it. You could be looking at grim flu-like comedowns, or you could be looking at stress induced heart attack. It’s probably better to just avoid all together.

MESCALINE

Effects:

A psychedelic drug that emanates from the seeds found in the Peyote cactus. It’s been used for thousands of years, notably by some Native Americans in Mexico as a part of spiritual ceremonies. More famously it was part of Hunter S Thompson’ contraband suitcase inFear and Loathing in Las Vegas and played a semi-large part in sending him straight to Bat Country. You’ll see the kind of scary hallucinations that don’t go away when you close your eyes and have an all-round bizarre time.

Repercussions:

If it all starts going wrong when you’re on it you’ll be stuck in a state of panic for the duration of the trip. The world will be distorted and your motor systems will be all out of sync. You could think you’re a superhero and then go on to really hurt yourself. There’s also the odd report of heart attacks and diarrhoea and vomiting. Not to mention the obvious post-traumatic stress effects on mental health.

http://drugabuse.com/

Can You Tell if Your Therapist Has Empathy?

New software developed by researchers detects a person’s ability to understand or share feelings in therapy sessions.

The research is in PLOS ONE. (full open access)

NASA's solar-powered Juno breaks distance record at 793 million km from the Sun

Proof that solar power can really take us places.

On the home stretch to Jupiter, NASA’s Juno probe has made history, becoming the most distant solar-powered spacecraft ever launched by humankind.

Juno broke the record this week at 19:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 13, hitting a whopping 793 million kilometres (493 million miles) from the Sun – not too shabby for a vessel that relies on solar rays to keep the lights on.

Juno pipped the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, the orbit of which hit a high point of 792 million kilometres (492 million miles) in October 2012 as it homed in on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Australia’s using drones to protect its coasts from sharks

ICYMI: Robotic teddy bear, electric glue formula and more